The Great Louse Detective
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"The Great Louse Detective" is the sixth episode of The Simpsons' fourteenth season. It features Kelsey Grammer in his eighth appearance as Sideshow Bob. After this episode, The Simpsons episodes were converting to digital ink and paint. In the episode, when Homer discovers that someone is trying to kill him, Chief Wiggum enlists Sideshow Bob to help identify the mystery assailant. It turns out to be Frank Grimes Jr., son of Homer's deceased former co-worker, who is seeking to avenge his father's death.
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[edit] Plot
When the Simpson family go to a free spa weekend, Homer is nearly killed when a mysterious person locks him into an incredibly hot steam room with a spanner. This prompts Homer and Marge to see Chief Wiggum, who suggests that they get someone who can understand a murderer's twisted mind — Sideshow Bob, who is released from prison, much to Bart's discomfort. To ensure Bart's safety, Wiggum places a shock bracelet on Bob's ankle to keep his murderous urges at bay when he comes to live at the Simpson house. He asks Homer to list all the people who may want him dead, and decides to follow Homer around to investigate who the killer could be. During their day, they go hang gliding (Homer wanted to impress him), visit the Kwik-E-Mart (where Bob and Apu reminisce about their last encounter) and end up at a repair shop, where Homer chastises the mechanic, Junior.
Later, Homer and Bob go to Moe's Tavern, where a hand, holding a gun, appears at the door and fires at Homer, but it hits and shatters Moe's pickled egg jar. The person gets away in a tow truck. Bob suggests that Homer should stay home and out of sight to be safe, but he is told that he was named the King of the Springfield Mardi Gras, in which he must ride on a float for the whole day. Bob discovers that Homer won because someone filled the ballot box with ballots listing Homer's name, but Homer takes part in the parade anyway in hopes of luring out his killer. At the parade, Bob learns that Homer's engine is having a problem due to the repair by the mechanic (the brake line is cut), and draws a correlation between the wrench used to lock Homer in the steam room, the wrenches in the tow truck, a smudge on the spa invitation, and the tow truck driver (Junior). He saves Homer by getting fired out of a cannon, and grabbing Homer with his huge feet slipped under Homer's arm-pits, just before the float hits the swords of the Museum of Swordfish. Homer and Bob end up giving chase on stilts to the killer, who is also on stilts, who is found out to be, indeed, Junior, Homer's mechanic. He admits his name is Frank Grimes Jr., who blames Homer for his father's death in the episode Homer's Enemy. The police arrive, and Chief Wiggum places Grimes Jr. under arrest and has Bob tranquilized with a dart.
That night, after Homer puts Bart in bed, Bob, who was hanging to the back of the door, leaps down. Bart tries to get the shock bracelet remote control, but Bob already has it and throws it out of the window (it falls into a bird's nest...), gags Bart with a piece of tape, picks him up and prepares to kill him with a knife, bent on killing him once again. However, Bob realizes he is accustomed to Bart's face and he can not bring himself to do it. At one point Bart ungags himself and sings the line 'He's grown accustumed to my face,' but when Bob complains, Bart apologises and regags himself. With that, Bob takes his leave and Bart hurriedly shuts his window. At that point, Bob is repeatedly electrocuted with his shock bracelet by two birds who play with the remote on their nest.
[edit] Cultural References
- The title of the episode is a play on the 1986 Disney Film The Great Mouse Detective.
- The plot of Homer's assailant being a mechanic is reminiscent of the 1972 Charles Bronson film The Mechanic
- Bob sings I've Grown Accustomed To Her Face from My Fair Lady with altered lyrics.
- Homer uses a George Foreman mail sorter, an obvious parody of the George Foreman Grill. The device sorts out the good and bad mail and grills the bad, which Homer then puts into a bun and eats.
[edit] Theme
Sideshow Bob is a recurring character on The Simpsons. Since season three's "Black Widower" (1992), the writers have echoed the premise of Wile E. Coyote chasing the Road Runner from the 1949-1966 Looney Tunes cartoons by having Bob unexpectedly insert himself into Bart's life and attempt to kill him. Executive producer Al Jean has compared Bob's character to that of Wile E. Coyote, noting that both are intelligent, yet always foiled by what they perceive as an inferior intellect.[1] The scene in which Bob is stomped on by multiple elephants and bounces right back up is a reference to the Wile E. Coyote character.[1]
In Planet Simpson, author Chris Turner writes that Bob is built into a highbrow snob and conservative Republican so that the writers can continually hit him with a rake and bring him down. He represents high culture while Krusty, one of his archenemies, represents low culture, and Bart, stuck in between, always wins out.[2] In the book Leaving Springfield, David L. G. Arnold comments that Bart is a product of a "mass-culture upbringing" and thus is Bob's enemy.[3]
Bob's intelligence serves him in many ways. During "Cape Feare", for example, the parole board asks Bob why he has a tattoo that says "Die Bart, Die". Bob replies that it is German for "The Bart, The"; members of the board are impressed by his reasoning.[4] Believing that "nobody who speaks German could be an evil man," they release him. However, his love of high culture is sometimes used against him. In that same episode, Bob agrees to perform the operetta H.M.S. Pinafore in its entirety as a last request for Bart. The tactic stalls Bob long enough for the police to arrest him.[4]
[edit] Production notes
- This is the fourth Simpsons episode to be animated using digital ink and paint (the previous episodes include season seven's "Radioactive Man", season 12's "Tennis the Menace", and this season's "Treehouse of Horror XIII"). Starting with this episode, The Simpsons would be regularly animated and colored with digital ink and paint.
[edit] References
[edit] External links
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Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: "The Great Louse Detective" |
- "The Great Louse Detective" at The Simpsons.com
- "The Great Louse Detective" at the Internet Movie Database
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